Friday, June 2, 2006

Secret Journey 2006 As I left the valley yesterday, I ran into this annual rite of spring, one of the cattle drives along the highway toward summer pastures.

I was on a mission though, I was on a quest for beauty and further light and knowledge. One source of such amusement for me are these graveyards. I love cemeteries for many reasons, for grass and trees, for the information on the gravestones, and for the people and stories long passed from this now green earth. The Provo Cemetery is a great mix of the new and the old, the ostentatious and the pious, and all things hallowed for whatever reason. There are ancient junipers and not quite so old magnolias, limestone markers and granite crypts. I like to sit and listen to whatever passes by while looking at the leaves against the sky while amongst the graves, and somehow it comforts me that there have been so many who pass over in whatever way they end, and I'm still not sure what happens on the other side in spite of all my searches.

Among the places I explored was an old iron smelter site in a beautiful grove of Russian olive trees and wetlands. The specimens of plants and trees is wide-ranging, and one never knows what will turn up when one goes there.

The last time I was on the grounds was fourteen years ago, on a Botany field trip while I was going to Snow College. We harvested sedge, several species of mint, cattail, horsetail, and many others for herbaria that were a large part of our grades that term. I lost mine when I inadvertently left it in our damned fifth-wheel trailer after we sold it back in '94. Too bad about that. This is in a different part of the site, at least a half a mile away from the site we explored on that field trip.

Some of the fresh graffiti here and there on the site.

A Superman of sorts, competing for the imagination with all the other permutations and reincarnations of the icon. This is one of my favorites.

This must have been a fair mighty building at one time. What a waste of materials and labor to just dismantle and abandon all of this industry.

Next to the site is this unused road spurring off from the dirt roads meandering over the abandoned area. The city must use it to initiate the newbies to the art of line painting. On the way home, I headed up a canyon that I'd not gone up in all of the years I've lived in this area, even though it's not more than forty miles away. There's much to see and understand, with many relic of the recent past hidden from the road and hydrological gems to explored in the future. I had very good journey today.